How Jacqui Walshe failed

11 Aug2017

Jacqui Walshe is the long term Managing Director of The Walshe Group, which looks after clients such as Abu Dhabi, Hawai’i Tourism, Etihad and many more. She’s also the latest in a string of industry leaders to admit failure.

Yep, Walshe, along with Wendy Wu, Jennifer Vanderkreeke, Christian Hunter, and more, are standing up and confessing their failures, but in the most positive of lights.

You see, failure is not a bad thing – it’s quite the opposite – and these speakers from our upcoming Travel DAZE TEDx-style conference on September 25 are all about the failure.

Alongside oodles of other speakers, Walshe is urging the travel industry to be more courageous, more daring, and to take risks that ensure you’re well on the way to reaching success.

Walshe told TW, “In the 80s and 90s, our business was called Walshes World because we represented everything from trains to ferries to hotels, airlines and tourism boards.

“In the early 1990s, we made a strategic decision to streamline the business by solely specialising in airlines and tourism bodies.

“This move was a major shock to some of our clients at the time, but it was one we believed in.

“Then, 9/11 happened and at the time, we only represented two airlines in the Australian market: both were North American and both were partners of Ansett.

“Within the next six months our revenue tanked, we lost one airline account altogether, and we almost lost our entire business. But twelve months on we had three new accounts in Australia which grew to be our cornerstone revenue for some years.

“Luck? Perhaps or simply work hard get lucky.”

Talk about a tough run!

“So what did this very near catastrophic failure teach me?” Walshe asked.

“It allowed me to see that even when things look dire and it feels there’s no possible recovery, there is always a way out somehow. You just have to broaden your thinking and work like crazy.”